1995, When CD-ROMs and Microsoft Ruled

The Windows 95 launch was the iPhone launch of its day. On Aug. 24, 1995, crowds lined up to purchase what Microsoft promised was the biggest transformation yet in desktop computing. Where did they line up? At stores, which were still at the time really the only way outside of mail-order that the average consumer could buy software.

The hype surrounding the release of a new desktop operating system — an operating system! — probably looks a little mystifying to anyone born after 1990. But today's teens have little memory of a time when Apple was a struggling also-ran computer maker, Microsoft was an unstoppable force of innovation, and cellphones were luxury items the size of bricks. Windows 95 wasn't even a radical departure from what had come before. It still relied on file folders and, well, windows as its prevailing visual and organizational metaphors. But it also introduced Internet Explorer, which while reviled by web developers was until this year the leading way the world browsed the web.

While Microsoft is reportedly pouring $1.5 billion into the marketing of Windows 8, its launch Friday just doesn't have cultural significance of its forerunner's release 17 years ago. This is in part because of when it arrives in the history of personal computing (late) and in the arc of Microsoft as a business (late). The launch of Windows 95 in a sense was the close of a chapter rather than an opening: It was the last time Microsoft owned the conversation.

Above: Bill Gates and the Start Button

In 1995, Microsoft was Bill Gates' company. Just shy of 40 when Windows 95 launched, Gates was a CEO still deeply engaged with the evolution of Microsoft's software, and he did not hesitate to make himself the public face of the Windows 95 launch. Pictured here the night of the launch at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Gates ushered in the iconic Start button. While nested lists of hierarchical menus hardly seems like a design revelation today, the Start button has come to define Windows so much that its absence has dominated the headlines of Windows 8 reviews.

Windows 95 Midnight Launch

At a time when downloading a new operating system takes a few minutes, the idea of schlepping to a store to buy software that comes in a box seems quaint, at best. Microsoft will try to recreate the kind of frenzy seen above in New York City the night Windows 95 came out with Windows 8 midnight launch events. But it's hard to imagine even the Surface tablet matching the excitement of finally being able to put spaces in filenames that could also be longer than eight characters.

Photo: Rick Maiman/Sygma/Corbis

Brian Eno and the Windows 95 Theme

Brian Eno may have produced records for U2, Talking Heads, and David Bowie (pictured with Eno above), not to mention his own storied career as a musician. But the single Eno composition likely heard by more people more times than any other is the Windows 95 startup sound. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Eno recounted the sound's origins:

The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it."

The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.

Also, it sounds totally awesome when played back 23 times slower than the original.

Microsoft Bob

Despite its smashing success, Windows 95 came with a few stinkers that presaged some of Microsoft's more serious failures to come. Microsoft Bob was a misguided attempt to layer a cartoon-style interface over the whole operating system, evidently to make it more user-friendly. Clunky and slow, anyone over the age of 4 probably found Bob frustrating and pointless, especially since a simpler user experience was a key selling point of Windows 95 itself. Bob has since become canonized on the list of all-time worst tech products. Bonus hate points: Bob gave the world the font Comic Sans.

Windows 95 Carnival

To celebrate Windows 95, Microsoft organized a launch event at its Redmond campus attended by thousands and broadcast live (by satellite, not the internet, natch) to other launch parties and stores around the world. Jay Leno, even then not the country's hippest talk show host, served as emcee. He introduced Gates as a man "so successful his chauffer is Ross Perot." (Look it up, kids.) Gates got Leno back with this zinger: "Windows 95 is so easy even a talk show host can figure it out."

Photo: Najlah Feanny/CORBIS SABA

Giant Laptops, Tiny Screens

Windows 95 was probably one of the last major operating system releases to be experienced mainly on desktop computers. The photo above depicts Windows 95 developers with laptops that were clearly state-of-the-art, since they could run Windows 95. Laptops, then called notebooks, typically came with about 4MB of RAM and hard drives between 150MB and 300MB. (A clean install of Windows 95 required 50MB to 55MB of hard drive space.)

Photo: Dan Lamont/CORBIS

The CD-ROM

The less well-off nerds who bought their copies of Windows 95 that first night went home with a box of 13 floppy disks — still standard media for computers at the time. The better-off geeks with the hot new machines went home with CD-ROMs. Bill Gates was bullish on CD-ROMs as key to the future of interactive media. (Remember Encarta? It even had hyperlinks.) The CD-ROM focus may have slowed Microsoft in its embrace of the potential of the web. But in 1995, when machines still came with 14.4K dial-up modems, CD-ROMs still stirred imaginations.

Incidentally, the AP photo above shows a young Russian looking at a pirated copy of Windows 95 the day of the launch. The AP said pirated copies were circulating in Moscow for at least six months prior to Windows 95's official release.

"Start Me Up," The Rolling Stones

Securing the rights to the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" still stands as Microsoft's biggest marketing coup, and a look back at
one of the commercials shows why. Aided by some tight editing, the Stones' energy and swagger perform the seemingly impossible task of making 11 million lines of code look cool. The song was the first the Stones had licensed for a television commercial. In an interview, Microsoft branding exec Bob Herbold said the song rights cost the company about $3 million.

Edie Brickell and Multimedia

In 1995, the idea of playing back video on your PC was still relatively novel, at least at the consumer level. Windows 95 was the first Microsoft operating system to ship with integrated video playback. To show off Windows 95's multimedia capabilities, it came with two quintessentially mid-'90s music videos: "Buddy Holly" by Weezer and "Good Times" by Edie Brickell (above).

The Future

The Windows 95 start screen cloudscape suggests an optimistic view of a limitless future, powered by the technology sitting in front of you. And for a few years, the sky was the limit for Microsoft. By 1998, it had become the world's most valuable company by market cap. Bill Gates was a celebrity, a best-selling author, and the most recognizable icon in the world of technology. A few years after that — exactly six years to the day after Windows 95 launched — Windows XP began to ship to computer makers. Two months after that, the first iPod was unveiled. Microsoft would never be the same.

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